Jean Françaix’s centenary last year was marked by a few excellent releases,
and I seem to have been tasked with reviewing all of them. Having covered
a bounty of chamber music, I took a little break before tackling this
three-CD set of music for orchestra and wind ensembles. It’s as fun, cheery
and fresh as everything else Françaix wrote, but there’s more to it than
that.

His style, in brief: winning melodies, the ease and charm of a coffee-shop
wit, and music largely untroubled by matters of depth, seriousness, sadness,
or modernity in general. To the extent that Françaix is interested in
other 20th century music, it’s the likes of Milhaud, Gershwin,
and perhaps secular Poulenc. There’s a simplicity to the music that explains
its obscurity: musicologists turned their noses up at such non-serious
fare, and the sameness of the composer’s language means that, even though
Françaix is a lot of fun, he never really changes. The only works I’ve
heard that defy my characterization are two concertos found in this collection.

If you can accept that, or if you already know you like Françaix, this
is a worthy treasury. Some of the work titles telegraph their content:
Variations on a Pleasant Theme is a very pleasant piece, the
wildly scored Danses exotiques include Caribbean sounds and “Rock’n’roll”,
Le gay Paris lets the trumpet soloist parade down the avenues
in an absurdly catchy march, and Cinq portraits de jeunes filles,
a solo piano work, is a sort of French version of the Gershwin piano preludes.
One wonders how else Françaix showed the jeunes filles his obvious
affection.

The harpsichord concerto is more serious and more directly ‘modern’, and
the minuet’s trio contains some incredibly lovely writing for the accompanying
orchestra, but the choice of solo instrument does not indicate an attempt
to mimic baroque style.

Two more substantial works are the guitar concerto and the concerto for
two pianos, which at a half-hour is the longest Françaix piece I know.
I haven’t heard his L’Apocalypse selon St. Jean, Oratorio fantastique.
The guitar concerto is one of the few which doesn’t sound at all Spanish;
instead it brings out an interesting new style which blends Italianate
folk with a cheeky-but-strident tone like some kind of Parisian Shostakovich.
The string orchestra accompanies with furious pizzicatos and, in the first
larghetto, an astonishing combination of trick effects and warm melody.
The frustrating thing about Françaix is that it doesn’t stay a larghetto
for long. The finale is capped by a sensitive, songlike cadenza; all in
all this is now one of my favorite works by Françaix.

My other favorite? The concerto for two pianos is more romantic in aesthetic
than most: the piano writing at times evokes the Debussy of Children’s
Corner or the Ravel of Le Tombeau de Couperin, with the
orchestra contributing lovely horn melodies and the occasional bassoon
duet. The eight-minute lento slow movement might be the best sustained
slow music I’ve ever heard from Françaix, a finely textured nocturne that
never grows overripe and never hastens on its way. Truly superb.

After these two exceptional concertos and the deliciously wacky Danses
exotiques, the third CD comes as a bit of a surprise: these are all
Françaix arrangements of, or tributes to, other composers. Schubert’s
Marches Militaires get arranged for wind battery, as do trifles
by Chopin and Chabrier, while Françaix composes fantasies on themes by
Haydn (the “Surprise” symphony; there’s a long double bass solo which
very fancifully strays from Haydn to other composers) and Mozart (arias
from The Magic Flute). In a French spoken introduction, Françaix
tells us that his Petite valse européenne is for “that prima
donna, the tuba.” How many quotations can you identify? The Don Giovanni
serenade starts off by quoting the wrong opera by the wrong composer,
and Quasi improvvisando might as well have been written by P.D.Q.
Bach.

So this set shows that there are several sides to Jean Françaix. There
is the wit and sparkle of Le gay Paris, the love of his predecessors
which gives us an elegy for Mozart and an homage to Papageno, and — most
surprisingly — an emotional depth which is rare in Françaix but very strongly
present in the concerto for two pianos. All told, of all the Françaix
tribute albums which came out in 2012, this is probably the one I’m happiest
to have. Recorded over many years and in many places, the engineering
never detracts from the enjoyment.